


no light, no light (get me out of this everlasting midnight)

by pawn_vs_player



Series: E͏R̰͔͚R̰̫̻͚͔͖O̥̜͙͈̺͔̟R̨͇:̖ ̢͔̤̘̲͈F͟I̤̳̹̥̻̹̠L̨̥̯̪̙̝͎E҉̯͈̞̗͖̥ ̟̠͖̰̥̹ͅN͠O̴̺̝̱̫Ṯ̸͕͔ ̙̳F͚͉̩OU̱̭͓̠͇͟N̥͇̮͈͇̹D̞̯̲̠.̙̱ ̹͙̝͈͈P̡͙̦̩L̳̯̤͚E̞͡ͅA͓̬S̱͝E͓̘̱͎͈̮͚ ̷͇͖̭T͓̖̞̞̬͚̥R̸̪͍̟͉͍ͅY̴͈ ̗͓̦A̺̗̝̟͚̺G͍͙Ḁ̴͎̤ͅI͟N̷̹̳͎̫̤.̠̦̺͎̻͜ [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Chara is such a dick, Depression, Doomed Timelines, Erased Characters, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Instability, Not Really Character Death, POV Alphys, POV Second Person, Past Relationship(s), Spoilers - Undertale Genocide Route, Suicidal Thoughts, THERE WILL BE MORE I SWEAR IT, The Void, Void Alphys, but the next part doesn't really fit the tone of this so i wanted to split it up, but they aren't really DEAD persay, most of the things in the VOID aren't friendly, plus this way you get more updates faster, sorry - Freeform, they've been erased which is a bit like dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-23 05:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9641879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pawn_vs_player/pseuds/pawn_vs_player
Summary: Alphys may have deleted herself and her timeline, but all that d e t e r m i n a t i o n doesn’t just go away.And nothing is ever truly e r a s e d .((Here's a lesson she learns too late: Keep an eye out for the horrors in the VOID. They'll catch you if you aren't careful, and then you'll end up just like them; all sharp words and sharper smiles, made of shadow and chaos and pain. And we wouldn't want that, would we?))Direct sequel to "a megalomaniac and their marionette".





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hereisthere_gg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hereisthere_gg/gifts).



> *The author grins brightly.  
> *The Adventures of VOID Alphys, part one.  
> *3nj0y! =)
> 
> *(Also: THE AUTHOR LEARNED HOW TO USE THE FREAKY TEXT AND IT IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED ALL DAY.)

You hadn’t expected to wake up. Or, well, wake up isn’t maybe the right word, but that’s not the point. The point is that you weren’t expecting to do _anything_ anymore, because you were dead. More than dead, _deleted_ , erased from spacetime itself along with your world.

But then again- you’re an engineer, a mechanic, and you’re a common presence on the Undernet. And the first rule of coding, of posting content or building a machine and making plans for that machine, is that nothing is ever truly gone.

So you maybe should have expected this. (Maybe, deep down, you _were_ expecting this.)

So it’s not accurate to say you weren’t expecting to wake up. Maybe, maybe possibly probably definitely, it’s more accurate- or, rather, precise and exact and true- to say that you were _hoping_ you wouldn’t wake up.

 

You’re tired, and you’re terrified, and you’re lonely.

You’ve mourned your best friend for what amounts to years even as he sits next to you and cracks jokes. You’ve watched the love of your life die so many times it’s become routine (even though it never stops hurting). You’ve saved lives because people trusted your word and feared the human, and lost lives because you weren’t quick enough or they weren’t scared enough. You’ve seen the human smile with red eyes, slice their knife over their neck or through Papyrus’ scarf or through Flowey’s face. You’ve seen the human playing with Greater Dog in the snow, befriending Sans and Undyne and Mettaton. You’ve watched your friend destroy himself hundreds of times in an forever-futile attempt at stopping the human before they got to you, to the king, to Sans. You’ve watched Papyrus’ final speech so often you mumble it along with him without a thought. You’ve seen the human step through the door with Toriel’s hand on their shoulder, and the human wave at your camera with dust coating their shirt and drifting from their hair.

You don’t want to be strong anymore, and erasure- complete destruction, no backups, utter annihilation- was the last door you had yet to open.

And that didn’t work. You’re still here, still- somewhere. Existing.

You want to cry, but you don’t think you can anymore.

 

You aren't the only thing here.

There are whispers- nearly constant whispers. They come from all around you, enveloping you in their quiet, rasping voices and their dark, toxic words.

They remind you of the timelines when you were so terribly, unforgivably weak, when you locked yourself in your lab and followed Undyne into the darkness. They caress your scales and speak of how careful Undyne had been with you, how soft her touches and how sweet her kisses, the way her hair felt when you woke up with it strewn over your face and how she shivered so prettily when you pet her gills. They remind you of how gentle Chara had been with their knife the one time they caught you out of your lab in Hotland, the soft silver touches of the knife as they levered your scales off your skin one by one, those unnaturally bright eyes and the accompanying determination-red smile that never left their lips as they dusted you piece by piece.

The darkness dances in front of your eyes. Their words shape your memories, all shaded in the gray of the dust that follows in the child's footsteps. 

The first time you ever watched Undyne die; Frisk's small, dark fingers on the knife, shaking even when they dealt the second lethal blow. Undyne rising from dust once only to succumb to her own determination; Falling Down with faith in you, in Asgore, in everyone she was dying to protect. You had fallen, sobbing too hard to breathe. The next time you checked the monitor, Frisk was kneeling next to the pile of greenish dust, and they were crying too.

The day Gaster and the team were ERASED; Sans fighting your grasp and screaming  _DAD!_ , Syru the only one looking at the two of you as he was shredded into unreality, Gaster's lab coat flaring in the blast of energy as his bones were enveloped in thick black nothing, the red alert lights flashing in intervals across their faces as they were ripped out of your world. The sound of the CORE overloading almost like a scream, energy pounding and flaring like lightning strikes, stabbing into you and Sans; the ache and burn of magic never meant to be wielded by monsters settling into you, turning your color and wrapping around your soul like a blanket even as you watched Sans' eyelights sputter, one going out and the other blazing like a warning flare.

Your father settling you into the thick muck of the Dump, pulling a ratty blanket from the top of a nearby pile and settling it around your shoulders.  _I'll come back when I can. Be strong for me._ His back as he walked away from you. Your ever-more desperate pleas that he ignored just like he'd ignored all your other ones.

Shuffling out of your kitchen with your steaming mug of coffee in your hand, glancing out the window to see Mettaton's door flung open and Papyrus' scarf lying like a gaping wound across the doorstep. Turning to the stairs, crying out for your wife only to be answered by a soft giggle. The now-familiar scarlet flare as they tossed your wife's eyepatch down the stairs. Their smile as they threw themself at you knife-first, and the burst of pain in your chest that signaled the end of your happy ending.

The first time you knew, fully and truly, what you'd done to Asriel. The pain in Asriel's voice as he spoke to Frisk.  _I'll just turn back into a flower. Leave me here. I- I just can't understand!_ The scowl on Flowey's face when he saw you that couldn't hide the fear in his eyes. The flinch when you reached to touch him that preceded the flurry of bullets. Watching from far away so as not to be noticed as Flowey turned away from Sans and wept silently, as Sans closed his eyes and let him. The disbelief he showed when you brought him a laptop, like he'd never expected any sort of help to come from you.

Watching Asgore fall, to the soulless husk of his son, to the corrupted shell of his child, to the blank-faced child that would have broken the barrier and saved them all.  _Take my soul. I do not wish to fight you. It was nice to know you. I am sorry._

Watching Mettaton go out to fight the human again and again, and knowing that he was always doomed to fail. The smile on his face, the confidence he held up like a mask, even as his soul trembled in its container and he told you to give Blooky all his love. Knowing that whatever upgrades you gave him would never be enough. Watching one of your best friends pull his own plug in a blaze of sparkling pink glory, self-destructing in a last-ditch effort that never paid off. Giving Napstablook the message and watching them sob themself into a lake of ectoplasm, or never seeing Napstablook again even knowing the ignorance was worse than the grief because you couldn't bear to watch that again.

Finding a middle ground with Flowey and then more than that, all the time knowing why you were the only two left alive, knowing what was going on outside your lab, knowing why time was constantly fluctuating and the shadows on your walls were growing reaching hands and ghastly smiling mouths, knowing why you'd turned off your cameras and their microphones, knowing that even between the two of you that there was  _nothing_ you could do to stop them.

Looking your best friend in the eye and knowing that everything he was had been torn out of him, and you couldn't get it back.

 

The VOID reaches out to you with grasping fingers, the voices overlapping and growing louder. Blackness seeps under your scales, splotching across your lab coat, forms memories you wish you didn't have. It speaks to you of prices, paying the debt you owe it for its help. You used us, it says, they say, horrorterrors crawling across your body and wriggling into your soul, dark truths coating your lungs. You used us, pulled us into your world to fight another part of us. Did you think we would forgive you? Did you think you could escape us? Did you think you were above _consequences_?

No, you tell them, it. No, I didn't. 

Then why are you fighting? it, they ask. You are ours, now. Another piece of us. We have no names, no memories. We are not people. We are chaos, we are misery, we are rage. We are everything you pretend you are above.

I can't help fighting, you say, even as another dose of black unreality slips down your throat. You choke on it, but the words come anyway. I don't want to be here. I want to go back. 

(Back, _all the way back_ , to when you were on the surface and celebrating your third year of marriage to the love of your life, adoption papers on the table and Napstablook's latest album on the radio, roses in a vase on the windowsill and Undyne wrapped around you on the couch as you watched the finale of Hetalia together.)

You are ours, it screams. You are us. You have no name, no home, no desires of your own. You are us, and you will give yourself over.

You can't see your legs anymore. Pieces of your lab coat drift away as the blackness shreds into the arms, white quickly being absorbed by the darkness of the VOID. 

Nothing real can exist here. You are ERASED. You are gone. This is where you are. This is who you must be, now.

Except-

No, you say, and clamp your teeth down against the thick, acidic dark that tries to shove itself into your lungs. No. I will not submit to you. I will not become you.

YOU ARE US, the VOID howls. It tears at you from the inside and out, black tendrils worming their way through your skin and boring back through your scales to open passages for their external brethren. YOU ARE US. YOU WILL ACCEPT YOUR FATE.

No, you say. No. I'm done giving in.

Sans had always gone to battle in the Judgement Hall knowing what awaited him. Mettaton had never even considered the possibility of him winning, only that he could provide more time for you to evacuate the survivors. Undyne always knew that taking the hit meant for Monster Kid would kill her.

They had never accepted the inevitable. You think it's about time you start doing the same.

You're going to give them a reason to be proud of you for once. 

You close your eyes. It is black behind your lids, too, but it is not the black of the VOID. It is a black you saw but once, when you had been surrounded by light too bright for you to process: the light had turned to shadow, and you had understood it then.

The blackness behind your lids is the blackness of a CORE implosion.

You reach for your soul. It is cracked and withered, scored with holes from the VOID's invasion, but it is still  _yours_. 

You reach for the light inside yourself, the power you absorbed so long ago. You had never wanted it before- it had come with so many risks, you could have blown yourself and everyone around you up if you'd lost control, and besides that it's those stolen CORE energies that've let you remember all the things you wish you'd forget- but now...

You're a scientist. You believe in things only when you have the evidence to back them up.

Right now, you're starting to believe in higher powers.

You will not take me, you scream. I am my own and no one else's. You WILL NOT TAKE ME!

 

 

*The VOID tries to absorb you...

 

*b u t 

*y o u 

*R  E  F  U  S  E 

 

 

*(Name the E R A S E D M O N S T E R .)

 

*Your name is...

*Oh, yes. You remember.

 

*Your name is ALPHYS. You are the ROYAL SCIENTIST. Once upon a time, you had a not-quite-brother named SANS and a wonderful wife named UNDYNE and an experiment-cum-best friend named METTATON and a tragic but gracious employer named ASGORE. 

*You have made a lot of mistakes in the past. You don't deny that.

*But you are d e t e r m i n e d to make up for your errors in every way that you can. And you can't do that if you give yourself over to this strange black place made of terror and chaos and pain and horror.

*You are not perfect, but you are a person. And you have seen what happens to someone who had their personhood stripped away from them.

 

*(You think of Undyne.)

*You are filled with B R A V E R Y.

*(You think of Papyrus.)

*You are filled with K I N D N E S S .

*(You think of Mettaton.)

*You are filled with I N T E G R I T Y .

*(You think of Asgore.)

*You are filled with P A T I E N C E .

*(You think of Toriel.)

*You are filled with P E R S E R V E R A N C E .

*(You think of Sans.)

*You are filled with J U S T I C E .

*(You think of Flowey.)

*You are filled with D E T E R M I N A T I O N .

 

 

The VOID screams. 

This time, it does not scare you. This time, it fills you with *power.

What are you, it demands, even as the black rushes back from you, the darkness pulling free of your body and wriggling after its brethren. How are you doing this? You are nothing. You are erased. You are not real. You are like us.

No, you say, and hold out your hand. For a moment, you feel Undyne's specter beside you, steadying your pose. ( _Plant your legs, display confidence even if you don't have it, and smile- it'll scare the enemy._ )

You think of Sans standing in the Hall, illuminated by the glow of a dozen blasters. A smile spreads across your face.

I am not like you, you tell the VOID. I am myself. I am Alphys. You cannot take me away from myself.

The CORE's magic is hot inside your soul. You feel the cracks inside yourself beginning to mend, the holes in your scales starting to zip shut.

*You will not fall to this.

I'm sorry, you say softly. I'm sorry you felt you had no choice but to give in to the darkness.

For a moment, you feel the VOID's multitude of voices silence themselves. They are listening to you.

I'm sorry that you felt that you were nothing, that you had no one to anchor you to reality or to yourself. I'm sorry that you felt like the only way was to surrender to this awful place. I'm sorry. I've felt that way too, sometimes- that I just shouldn't exist, that it would be better if I didn't. It would be better if I'd never existed.

The VOID trembles around you. You reach out to the darkness, multicolored light wrapped around your fingertips. 

I've felt like that, you continue. But I had people to pull me back, to tell me that I deserve to exist and that they having me in their reality. I'm sorry that no one did that for you. I'm sorry if you heard those words but it still wasn't enough.

I'm sorry.

 

*You look for something to S  A  V  E . . . 

 

 

*but there was nothing there.

 

 

We are beyond help, the VOID tells you. Its voices are soft once more, but this time they feel like the press of a warm blanket, not like the hungry tendrils of a spider's web. We are one with this place now. We are no one, and we are nothing. There is nothing for you to find that we have not already shown you.

_There are some people who just can't be saved._

I'm sorry, you say.

*The VOID is no longer listening.

You are not of us, it says. But you are here. You are ERASED. You are not part of your reality. We cannot let you go, but we cannot take you in either.

Isn't there anything in here that is separate from you? you ask. The VOID existed once without you, didn't it? Where are the places you do not occupy?

The VOID is quiet for a moment. You feel its thoughts humming around you.

Yes, it says eventually. Yes, there is a place, made long ago by the ones that came before you. They, too, refuse to be part of us. 

The ones who came before? you ask.

*The VOID is no longer listening.

They will accept you, the VOID declares. You will go. We will not reach for you again. 

But I have so many questions! you yell. You're a scientist, after all.

The VOID shifts around you. Smells like amusement.

Some things are not meant to be known, it says. We are doing you a great mercy by keeping our secrets.

As curious as you are, you believe them. You let your questions die in your throat.

Goodbye, you say quietly. 

The VOID presses in close for a moment, and you are once more enveloped in blackness, except that the many-hued light shifting over your skin remains as a thin barrier between you and the darkness.

Goodbye, Alphys.

 

 

*The VOID has left you.

*You are transported elsewhere.

 

 

You are now elsewhere.

It's quieter here. The whispers are gone. You... you're pretty sure that's a good sign. 

It's brighter here, too. 

Your eyes take a moment to adjust to the colors and the lighting. When they do, you gasp, just a little.

It's the lab. The True Lab. From before the CORE overloaded. The observation chamber is there, but now it looks out into the sea of blackness you'd just left. The equipment is scattered everywhere. It looks just like it had back then, the day everything went wrong, except that the lab is empty except for you.

You look at the clean white tiles. It's then that you realize that you're still glowing; the colors are dancing across the blank tiles like one of Mettaton's show openings. It makes something deep inside you ache.

 ~~Hello?~~ you call, and flinch at the sound of your own voice. That's not what you sound like. You sound like one of the VOID's whisperers; your voice echoes when it shouldn't, laid over itself in a double reverb like two of you speaking at once into an acoustics chamber. You touch at your throat, and feel something slick and strange. 

You press at it. 

Your fingers go in, and in, and in, and then suddenly you can  _feel your fingers in the back of your throat,_ and you yank out your hand with a quiet yelp.

You poke at your other hand. Your fingers sink in there, too. 

Your scales are a darker yellow, you realize, and the remnants of your lab coat are stained a solid black.

Well.

You suppose it was a little optimistic to presume that the VOID had left you completely untouched.

You look around again. You don't see any doors, but someone's been in here, you're sure of it. There are experiments here that you do not recognize from your time in reality, which means that someone's been using this lab here, in the VOID- and that someone knows how to use the equipment and has an interest in science.

The ones who came before, the VOID had said.

*You are filled with HOPE.

**Author's Note:**

> *Next time on The Adventures of VOID Alphys:  
> *Old friends are found, schemes are hatched, and uncomfortable truths are discussed.


End file.
